Lately I've been thinking a bit about the process of history, partly because I have to write an essay over the next month for my class at Carleton, partly because I'd been reading this. Plus, of course, there is the recent death of Pierre Berton.
Anyways, a phrase came to my mind that one would not normally associate with history. It was from Training Day, a rather brutal film about police corruption in Los Angeles. It's not what you know, Jake, it's what you can prove! That is fundamentally what historians have to deal with: not what the historian knows, but what the historian can prove.
On a sidenote, I've had a couple of people I know in the real world ask me what history might have to say about the Iraq War, down the road. I usually don't say much..though I usually would like to quote General John Burgoyne: History, Sir, will lie!